NASA's dishwasher-sized spacecraft will map Moon's water

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission is taking off soon, and it’s got one big job: solving the Moon’s water mystery.

This tiny satellite is catching a lift on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket – tagging along with Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 launch as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

It’ll spend months making its way to lunar orbit before getting down to business.

Hunt for Moon’s water

Scientists made an incredible discovery in recent decades – the Moon has water. But we barely know anything about it.

Where exactly is it? What form does it take? How much is there? Does it change over time?

Lunar Trailblazer wants answers. This little satellite will map Moon water in unprecedented detail.

The info it gathers during its two-year mission won’t just teach us about the Moon either, it’ll help us understand water cycles on airless bodies all across the solar system.

Smart tech for Moon’s water mystery

The spacecraft carries two impressive instruments.

First, there’s the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), an infrared spectrometer developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Then, there’s the Lunar Thermal Mapper (LTM), an infrared multispectral imager built by the University of Oxford with funding from the UK Space Agency.

HVM3 will track down spectral fingerprints – those wavelengths of reflected sunlight – that identify minerals and different water types on the lunar surface.

The LTM handles mapping the minerals and thermal properties of the same areas.

Together, they’ll create a complete picture of where water is, what form it takes, and how it shifts over time and temperature variations.

Getting there isn’t simple

The Lunar Trailblazer isn’t big – about the size of your dishwasher and weighing just 440 pounds with solar panels that extend 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) when fully open.

The mission team planned something clever: a looping path that’ll take 4-7 months, and use the gravity of the Sun, Earth, and Moon as natural guides.

The team calls this technique a low-energy transfer, and it makes the journey much more feasible for the small explorer.

Peeking into dark craters

Once it arrives, Lunar Trailblazer will direct its HVM3 instrument toward the Moon’s South Pole craters.

What makes these areas so remarkable? They contain cold traps that may have remained in darkness for billions of years – ideal hiding places for frozen water.

The spectrometer relies on faint light reflecting off crater walls to observe the floors of permanently shadowed regions.

If it detects substantial ice deposits at the bottom of these craters, future lunar explorers may have just identified their next crucial source of Moon water.

Doing more with less

NASA selected Lunar Trailblazer back in 2019 through their Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program. It’s all about hitching rides on other missions to save money.

These missions accept more risk and have less oversight than bigger projects. That’s the trade-off – but it lets NASA green-light science missions that just couldn’t happen otherwise.

Future of lunar exploration

Water is the key to survival in space.

If Lunar Trailblazer finds abundant, accessible ice, future astronauts won’t have to bring all their water from Earth – they can extract it directly from the Moon.

This could lead to sustainable lunar bases, longer missions, and even a stepping stone for Mars exploration.

But beyond its practical applications, this mission taps into something deeper – a human need to explore, to push boundaries, to uncover the unknown.

Lunar Trailblazer isn’t just a satellite; it’s a bridge to the future, guiding us toward a new era of space discovery.

Future research on Moon’s water mystery

The data from Lunar Trailblazer won’t just satisfy scientific curiosity. It’ll be practical. Future astronauts could use lunar ice for drinking water, breathing oxygen, or even rocket fuel.

Scientists might sample it to trace where Moon water originally came from.

Bethany Ehlmann of Caltech leads the mission as Principal Investigator, with Caltech handling the science and mission operations through their IPAC center.

NASA JPL manages everything and provides engineering support and the HVM3 instrument.

Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft itself and handles flight operations. It’s all part of NASA’s broader Lunar Discovery Exploration Program, which is overseen by the Planetary Mission Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center.

Information for this article came from a NASA JPL press release.

Image Credit: Lockheed Martin Space

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